Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Unique unit types for each race

0 (0%)

Unique unit types for each race with minor customization

3 (8.3%)

Design your own unit types

5 (13.9%)

Design your own unit types with unique techs for each race

21 (58.3%)

I don't care, just make it already!

3 (8.3%)

Unique unit types for each race with major customization

4 (11.1%)

Total Members Voted: 36

Voting closed: May 16, 2013, 02:12:51 am

[DreamThorn]

With the recent Ludum Dare #26, I have not only proved that I can make a complete game; I have also discovered the trick to getting myself to do it.

Recently, so-called "4X" space strategy games have made a come-back, but I find the new ones barely playable, because they're either completely real-time, turn based with real-time combat, or turn-based without proper combat.

In days of yore I really enjoyed Master of Orion 1 and 2 and Master of Magic, and recently I played them again to make sure that it's not my tastes that have changed.  These old games are even better than I remember. 

If I want a game like these golden oldies, it seems I'll have to make it myself.  To actually do this in a realistic time-frame, I have to make up my mind on the mechanics before-hand.  To help be do this, I've decided to run a series of polls and discussions.

The results of the poll are not final, but will rather be influenced by the discussion in this thread.

So, if you post, make sure that it is about why some of these options are better than the others.

[GalenEvil]

I picked Design your own unit types with unique techs for each race since I am a big fan of the Galactic Civilizations series and with the third installment there are unique tech trees for each civ in addition to the really nifty "Design your own ships" functionality.  I mostly enjoy designing my ships and can do without unique tech trees if that is an issue at all later on.

I'd probably go with a 2d graphic with "slots" to stuff ship modules into as far as customizing the ships. That will cut down heavily on the graphics requirements. Perhaps, if you want to have customizable ship aesthetics you could go with a sort of blocky "Captain Forever"ish set of eye-candy pieces and have functional ship modules fit onto these.

I haven't played MoO or MoO2, though I have played FreeOrion since I got a hankering for a quick 4x romp and couldn't find my install disk for GC That "quick" romp turned into a nice 10 hour game and rehooked me. Love me some space 4x/RTS/what-have-you games

Good Luck!

[Svampapa]

Option four, because who doesn't love full unit customization and unique tech? Really?

Also, FreeOrion is playable these days?

[DreamThorn]

GalCiv2's design-it-yourself units had lots of visual customization, but the barely-a-combat-system rendered the actual ship design simple and pointless.

In the Master of Orion games, I rather enjoyed designing ships that work together in special ways, or that use abilities that the AI usually neglects.  In MoO2, I once made a race of pirates that used tractor beams to halt enemy ships, punch through their shields and then boarded and captured them.  Then I reverse engineer these ships to get the 'usual' techs while I focus my research on the unusual things.

Although MoO2 had more cool abilities that one could use, in MoO1 the AI was capable of using more of them effectively.  I think the simpler battle map and tighter combat mechanics made that possible.

The reason why I'm considering pre-designed units at all, is that it can really bring out the character of the species.  (e.g. StarCraft, or the Battle for Wesnoth)

Then again, I have fantasized about a game where you could design your own weapons/systems and put them in ships that you also designed.  Now that I've actually played something like that (Aurora, I think) I know that it could lead to tons of boredom.  (Yes, boredom is measured in tons. )

Over the years I have come up with two ideas on how my game's combat system could work.

The one is similar to MoO2 (small 2D tiles with large ships), except with cover, line-of-fire and friendly fire added, so that placement actually matters.

The other is a 1D series of battles at different orbits and being affected by different defense systems.  (Like in Anacreon: Reconstruction 4021)  But more varied by using special commands.  (Like in battles from Final Fantasy V or VI)

And recently I've been thinking of the potential of Master of Magic style battles, with spells replaced by various long-distance abilities.

Anyway:

If I have fully designable spaceships, I will keep the number of item slots very low to encourage having specialized roles.

tl;dr:

Now that I'm discussing this with people, I'm suddenly having new ideas.  And writing walls of text.

[Armok]

One thing you might consider if you're making a large scale strategy space game like this, to make it stand out, is to not have FTL or have it be only extremely high up the tech tree and expensive, focusing instead on the various realistic propulsion systems and the accumulation and dissipation of heat being a key mechanic in combat, perhaps entirely replacing hitpoints. (mostly hitpoints are handled closer to this than any real structural damage anyway)

Atomic Rocket and Orions Arm have some good information on these things.

[10ebbor10]

But those things don't get anywhere ever. You'd play the turns in 100 year increments.

[DreamThorn]

I'm planning around having a variety of FTL systems, since this is one of my favorite features of Anacreon: Reconstruction 4021.  The different advantages and disadvantages can make for some interesting choices, as well as nice combos.

I've been thinking about the ship customization, and here is an idea that I think will work very well:

Each race has certain classes of ships, each with one piece of special equipment, and a certain amount of sized slots.  E.g. the Mfrawrs have a Lancer-class frigate, with two medium slots and a tactical jump-drive.  You could put in two plasma lances and use the jump to get in close, or you could put in a proton beam and a medium shield generator to create a kiting sniper, or maybe you have managed to reverse-engineer the Chuols' cloaking tech and have some cool plan on using it in conjunction with a tactical jump.

This way, one can customize ships to fit one's play style, while still having different flavor and art for each race.  I'll add this option to the poll; you can change your votes if you like.

[GalenEvil]

Yeah, GalCiv did lack a looooot in the combat department, with most of it coming down to rock-paper-scissors style fighting. I did enjoy making ships that laid waste to entire fleets of my enemies though.

Going on a little with Armok's idea of limited FTL use: Small ships would not be able to use FTL engines, possibly using power requirements and economic reasons for this, and have to rely on sublight engines to get from place to place. Economic reasons might be that FTL engines are expensive to manufacture and fit so it doesn't make a lot of sense to fit lots of tiny ships with them. Primary use would be for logistics and sending more munitions down range. Capital ships could use FTL, and some of these would have smaller, sublight, ships for reasons given. This would put a lot of focus on capital ships as the main ships in the game though while pushing anything that uses a sublight engine to more of a support role.

[DreamThorn]

I like the capital ships idea.  It is a neat solution to the stack-of-death problem.  I also have some other uses in mind for them.

EDIT: Changed fleet-of-doom to stack-of-death. 

[Cheesecake]

PTW

[10ebbor10]

Just a question for science, how are you going to do that?

Follow the standard tech tree system, or use a system were you assign budgets to several large areas, decide importances in the subareas, and then have the computer figure out inventions based on existing tech and infrastructure. These inventions can gave multiple uses, and multiple ways to be discovered. Some inventions decrease the likelyhood of others happening, resulting in a different tech run everytime.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Example: Under the major area Energy you got the subbranches Nuclear fision, Nuclear fusion, Solar, alternate sources, Planetary power, Transport and storage.
You set X credits as the budget for Energy, and then go divide the priorities. Adding funds to Nuclear fusion could lead to the development of super magnets, which would not only boost energy production, but also certain energy branches and mass driver research. However, you've already developped heavy armoring, reducing the likelyhood. (Internal reactor armor decreases nessicity of magnets).

Hence you decide to focus on Transport and storage, to aid your drones and remote bases. Since you've been using a lot of laser ships lately, gives you a significant chance of developping laser based energy transfer.

[DreamThorn]

Design Progress:

I'm getting the idea I have some selection bias in my statistics.

You see, DF is a very simulationist game, so of course many people in the forum make simulationist votes and suggestions.

Many years I have dreamed about a space empire building simulation, and I will probably still make one some day, but since this is only my second 'proper' game ever, I'm keeping it simple and top-down this time.

I only really realized this because of the discussions in this thread, so it wasn't a total waste.  My next polls will assume the use of a ludist (game-like) design paradigm.

Implementation Progress:

I forgot about rule #1 (make something visible and playable first), and went waaay off track this weekend:

List of mistakes:
1. I decided to start off with the main menu.
2. I decided the main menu needs a text renderer.  Since there will more-than-likely be text in the rest of the game, I decided to implement it now.
3. The text renderer needs fonts of course, but rather than using a 16x16 grid of ASCII characters, I decided to support Unicode.
4. The font system turned out to be useful for more than just fonts, so I expanded it to be an icon/stamp atlas instead.

Better luck this week, I hope.

[DreamThorn]

@10ebbor10:

One of the ideas I'm considering, regarding research, is that projects can become available due to certain triggers, and can also be sped up by certain triggers.  Some of these triggers will be the acquisition of certain techs or tech levels, as usual, but they could be anything else: random events, finding something during exploration, reverse-engineering stuff, encountering weapons/units in combat etc.

What I particularly like about this is that, as I'm designing the tech tree, I get ideas for the galaxy generator, and vice versa.  Also, I can add interactions between different races' tech trees.

The techs will also be divided into fields, like Master of Orion 1, and for the same reason:  It allows me to make some races more or less capable in certain fields.

[Virex]

I picked Design your own unit types with unique techs for each race since I am a big fan of the Galactic Civilizations series and with the third installment there are unique tech trees for each civ in addition to the really nifty "Design your own ships" functionality.  I mostly enjoy designing my ships and can do without unique tech trees if that is an issue at all later on.

I'd probably go with a 2d graphic with "slots" to stuff ship modules into as far as customizing the ships. That will cut down heavily on the graphics requirements. Perhaps, if you want to have customizable ship aesthetics you could go with a sort of blocky "Captain Forever"ish set of eye-candy pieces and have functional ship modules fit onto these.

That would be the system used by Stars!, no?

[GalenEvil]

@Virex: I haven't played Stars! but based on the wiki link you provided it seems very similar. If I can find a copy of it then I'll give a go at playing